The Price of the King's Peace by Nigel Tranter

Author:Nigel Tranter [Tranter, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780340125724
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Published: 1970-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

From Naas, the seat of MacMurrough, King of Leinster, they went by

Castledermot in Carlow to Callen in Kilkenny, de Clare country-where, however, the de Clares remained discreetly out of sight. And ever the face of the land changed. There was no great deal of tillage in the Irish countryside at best, and grain was correspondingly scarce.

Gradually even what there was died away.

But not only this. The rich grasslands and pastures for which this land was famous were now dwindling also, and moorland, bogs, peat-moss, rushes and outcropping stone became ever more dominant.

There were green oases in it all, but the terrain was becoming ever barer. Yet it was not an empty country. There were people in plenty, living in miserable cabins and huts of turf and reeds. The castles and manors and abbeys grew fewer, the townships smaller, the churches less ambitious. Yet it was probably true to say that the population increased as the living conditions deteriorated. And everywhere hunger increased until it became the very taint on the air. From being a faint shadow it became a threat and then an all pervading aura, a condition of life.

The Scots host’s supply-train began to shrink.

There was no problem in recruiting the Irish for Edward’s cause, now. The difficulty, indeed, was to prevent thousands from joining Bruce’s own company, with immediately available food as added attraction. He had to struggle now to keep down his numbers. This was Munster, where the ancient O’Brien ruled, and he was known to support Edward. But only mounted men were of any use to Bruce-and horses seemed this year to be for eating, in Munster, rather than riding. He found it hard, nevertheless, to reject and drive off hungry men. And, willy-nilly, his train grew. And slowed in consequence.

All this time Bruce saw nothing of the real enemy. But they heard of

them, frequently. Sir Edmund Butler, the former commander in Ireland,

who had superseded de Burgh, and then himself been superseded by the

Lord Mortimer, was still in effective control in Kilkenny, with, it was

said, 30,000 men. Hence Bruce’s drive in this direction. An

interesting report said that the de Clare brothers had joined him

there-and the de Clares, related to the English Earls of Gloucester, and therefore distantly to Bruce himself, were amongst the most powerful and influential of the Anglo Irish nobility known to be highly resentful over the present English demotion of their kind.

Bruce pondered this circumstance not a little. Mortimer himself was said to be on the move, from the east, with a large English force, part of it no doubt de Burgh’s late army. De Burgh was said to be still languishing in prison in Dublin Castle; although how rigorous was his captivity would be hard to say, for it was rumoured that the city mob had broken into the castle and slain eleven members of the Earl’s staff-which indicated less than solitary confinement.

Out of all this varied information Bruce made what plans he could. He conceived the disgruntled Butler to be the weakest link in the chain.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.